Page 4 of Not This Night

The rifle's recoil kissed Rachel Blackwood's shoulder, a familiar peck. Her gaze never wavered from the scope, every exhalation becoming a prelude to precision. Another shot cut through the air, the target in the distance—a mere speck against the vastness—rang out, the center punctured clean.

Inhale. Hold. Squeeze. The rhythm was a silent mantra, each repetition a moment of truth in a world rife with lies. Rachel could feel the pulse of the earth, the distant murmur of conversation behind her fading into nothingness. Only her and the target existed.

Flashback seared through focus, igniting memory: pine scent thick as fog, ground yielding under boots. Her younger self, heart a hammer in her chest, tracking the mountain lion. The beast, a ghost among trees, its tawny coat slipping through shadows like whispers of danger.

A shot rang out in the past, reverberating through time. Missed. Consequence screamed in the echo of that shot not taken, that moment of hesitation. Blood pounding, she had learned then what it meant to falter, to doubt. A lion's roar was a promise—it would not miss.

Back at the range, another bullseye. No room for hesitation here, not now. The targets were lifeless, but each hit banished ghosts, each round fired exorcised demons lurking in her mind. Practice was penance, absolution found in the recoil, the smell of gunpowder, the resounding confirmation of impact.

She would do better. She wouldn’t miss when it mattered.

"Nice shooting," someone said, voice cutting through the trance.

"Thanks," Rachel replied without turning, her voice flat, all business. She allowed herself the barest of nods, acknowledging the praise but not dwelling on it.

Another target. Another breath. Another ghost put to rest.

She hesitated now, staring across the range.

She didn’t want it to end.

She knew that much. After what her aunt had told her… about her parents’ deaths. Her mother’s involvement…

Rachel didn’t want to dig deeper. She found herself wanting to go back to what she’d first thought. Holding her parents in her mind as the paragons she’d imagined, but these thoughts whisked away like smoke.

Sheriff Dawes. The reservation. Why?

Her gut knotted at the thought. There was a history there—unspoken words, suspicions that curled around her like smoke from a snuffed-out candle. She hadn’t felt comfortable setting foot on that land since she was a child, since before the world had taken everything from her.

Why now? What did Dawes want?

It had to be her aunt’s doing. Her aunt had said someone had a recording of her mother, so Dawes had reached out.

It was connected, and here she was at the shooting range, avoiding Dawes. Avoiding her aunt.

She turned away.

She’d hit her hundred.

Rachel tucked the gun into its case with meticulous care, feeling the weight of the silent onlookers' stares.

"Taking off already?" one of them called out.

"Work to do," she replied, her voice clipped.

The gravel crunched beneath her boots as she strode away, leaving behind the scent of gunpowder and the echoes of gunfire further down the range mingling with the onlookers’ hushed commentary to one another.

Rachel paused as she cross the threshold to the firing range’s parking lot, her phone buzzing in her pocket. One glance at the caller ID, and her hand stilled. Dawes.

"Meet me. Reservation. Urgent."

Her thumb hovered, the impulse to delete gnawing at her restraint. But no, this message—it was a shard of glass from a shattered past, a beacon beckoning her towards answers she'd hungered for since childhood.

Dawes knew something, had always known. The same sheriff who'd looked her in the eye and promised justice for her parents, all those years ago. But what was this about? Was it a clue? A confession? Or another dead end?

"Hey! Blackwood!" a voice tried to pierce her focus. One of the onlookers likely trying to score a date in exchange for complimenting her shooting. It had happened before.

She didn't look back. There were no smiles left in her, no room for idle chatter. Instead, Rachel marched to her car, slipped into the front street of the old, beat up truck, the same white color as her hat.

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